


disordered, and wild with stars

by Whitherward



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: El Hopper is a goddamn force of nature, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 16:00:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18479572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whitherward/pseuds/Whitherward
Summary: And there, in the endless dark, his hand in yours.





	disordered, and wild with stars

**Author's Note:**

> Tried a thing. Idk.

.

 

You have never seen another child. He is like you, but not like you. A boy, who will be a man. And what will you be?

 

He says words you have never heard, like friend, and mother, and sister. You don't know what they mean, so he tells you, and you nod but you still don't really understand.

 

The others are like him but not like him and this confuses you too. They are loud, alternately playful and hostile, and they make you nervous, and through it all there is something in his eyes that speaks although you cannot fathom the words. Only that he is a still, quiet point in the noise. He stands in sharp relief as the rest of the world bleeds together at the edges.

 

.

 

You know what it is to miss him.

 

.

 

There is power that lives in you, slips between your bones and seeps through your skin, enough to crush a man, enough to burst his heart in his chest. 

 

You would lay entire cities to waste, burst a thousand thousand hearts, to keep him safe.

 

_No,_ he says.

 

You have never spoken it aloud but he knows anyway.

_Why,_ you say.

He tells you it's too dangerous, it’s not worth it, it would hurt you more than it would hurt them.

 

_Stay with me._

 

You do stay.

 

.

 

He offers more words and you take them like you took food when you were starving.

 

When he tells stories, you can see them in his eyes. He goes to some far away place, and at first you think you can’t follow, but he paints the air and the words are alive inside you. He is so beautiful.

 

You sit in the safe circle of his arms and watch as he searches his memory for every last shred of story and tale and legend he has ever heard. When he runs out, he reads them to you from books. Greek myth is the first, and the one that strikes you most deeply.

 

What sticks in your mind: Circe, who turned men into pigs. Demeter, who starved the earth until her daughter was returned. Medea, who slaughtered her brother to aid her escape.

 

That desperation is as familiar as your skin. You have worn it all your life.

 

You think of the people you have killed. You would do it again, if you had to.

 

.

 

His words have power over you and he doesn't know how much. He whispers them against your skin and you feel them with every beat of your heart. 

 

_I love you_ , _I love you_ , _I love you_.

 

.

 

Always your power burns white hot in your veins. Your anger too, until you think you may go mad with it. While he may rage like a forest fire, you burn like glowing coals, you nurse it and sustain it.

 

Why should you not? When the world is ugly why should you not cast your strength over it? Why should you make yourself small, make yourself less, when you can feel the shimmer of reality itself?

 

But those dark eyes draw you back. His eyes, and his clever words. He and all the people who came after him to wrap around you and make a family.

 

So, you temper yourself. But it's always there.

 

.

 

He explains the universe to you, lying in the dark, playing with the tips of your fingers. You can feel his voice vibrating against your skin.

 

You are made of dirt and electricity and starlight. From dust you come and to dust you shall return, to spread across the earth and through the air. Pieces of him and pieces of you, floating between the stars for as long as time exists.

 

_Yes_ , you think. _Yes_. 

 

.

 

You can hear the sound of the earth turning.

 

And the worms burrowing in the ground below your feet. And the beating of wings a thousand feet above.

 

Life is a symphony all around you, a constant low-frequency hum in your mind. The air vibrates like a spider’s web with you at its centre, and all you want is to touch each quivering strand.

 

The wind in your hair, the sting of rain, the burning sun on your skin. The world speaks: _I am here,_ it whispers, _and so are you._  

 

You drive across the country. Dark, after midnight, far from any town and the flat earth stretches out around you as the black sky presses down to meet it. Splashed across that blackness, a million million points of light, so bright and near you feel you could reach out and catch them between your fingers.  

 

And there, in the endless dark, his hand in yours. A kite string in the wind. A tether to the earth.

 

.

 

You have come to believe over the years that the power you have is yours and yours alone. 

 

Perhaps they cracked it open, or else helped coax it out, but they did not give it to you. No one gave it to you. It comes from inside you, and no one can take it away. 

 

Woe betide the man who tries.

 

Beware, the man who steps between you and what is yours.

 

.

 

The child is half of you and half of him. You look into her face and see those same steady eyes looking back, placid and unknowing. Innocent.

 

If you thought you would destroy cities to keep him safe, it is nothing compared to what you would do to for this small creature.

 

You can bend the wind itself to your will and you would wrap a barrier around her, keep the world outside so it cannot touch her with its ugliness, its cruelty.

 

_No_ , he says.

_Why_ , you ask. It is what you always ask.

 

His answer when it comes is like a knife in your belly.

 

Your childhood, in the confines of sterile white walls, and no concept of what lay outside them. 

 

You are angry, then. You want to punish him for it, for his rightness and his endless, infuriating knowing. 

 

He is always entirely certain, he who has never known suffering like yours, nor anger, nor fear. Who is he to tell you this. Who is he to tell you anything at all.

 

But in your heart, you know you are not being fair. You have borne witness to his pain and his struggling through the many years you have known him. You know his rages and his black moods. You know what haunts his nightmares. 

 

Again he works his words like a magic spell, and he draws you back and towards him. This is what it means to truly love another.

 

Sometimes to love them means to let the ugliness touch them. You will have to let the world leave its mark on her, there is no other way. To keep it from her would be the ultimate cruelty. This is something you know only too well.

 

You will protect her, he tells you, together. In a different way. By watching over her, nurturing her, teaching her.

 

And, when it is time, by letting her go.

 

.

 

_fin._


End file.
